Angel of Death

TWENTY-SEVEN

“What’s wrong?” the nurse asked. “Concentrate on your breathing.”

“He’s here,” Donna rasped out, bearing down. “I know it. He’s here.”

“He’s not here yet. Don’t push. Save your strength,” said the woman, middle-aged and motherly.

“Not the baby. Samael. The Son of Samael. He’s here, in this hospital,” Donna insisted. “I can feel it.”

“You’ve got two officers outside your door. They’ll keep you and the baby safe,” the nurse soothed. In her white polyester pants and jacket, she seemed almost a Felinni clown. “Pant blow, now.”

For the hundredth time, Donna began the breathing pattern – small comfort against the contractions. “They can’t stop him. He’s not dead. He has no limbs anymore, but somehow he got here. He can do anything. He kills whomever he wants.”

“Calm down. Are you sure you don’t have any allergies to morphine?”

“I tell you, he’s here.”

“Who’s here?” asked Doctor Lien as he walked into the birthing room. The man’s eyes were bright and mildly chiding. “The baby? Well, let’s see.”

Without invitation, he moved past the nurse, dragged a stool from beneath the foot of the bed, and sat down between Donna’s legs. Donning a rubber glove, he felt for the baby.

“Yes, he is here. Ten centimeters. Plus one station. Congratulations, Ms. Leland. It’s time for you to push.”

“Thank God,” Donna growled, bearing down with a contraction. She gripped the handles the nurse had just inserted into the bed. Her body grew as tight as a recurved bow. Cords stood out down her neck, and her face reddened.

“All right, relax for a second. Breathe. Good. Very good. You’re making good progress. Down another station. He’s positioned right. All right, try another push.”

All the while, the doctor was quietly sliding shelves and sections of bed into position, readying a bucket for the afterbirth. “Yes, excellent. Breathe. Then give me another just like it. Good. Good. He’s advancing. Are you comfortable with my finger there?”

“I’m not comfortable, period,” Donna gasped out.

“Let’s just push this baby out.”

“All right,” the doctor said, leaning his forehead seriously inward. “Push again.”

Donna did, rising up in the bed, hands clutching tightly to the handles. She watched her own trembling thighs and growled, saw the doctor’s slick black hair between her legs. In that mad, red instant, she wondered if it was him, Samael. He was the right height, the right build…

“Another push. Come on. You’re almost there.”

She hadn’t realized she had stopped pushing. It had been eighteen hours of hard labor. She was so weary, she was nodding off between contractions.

“One more good one, Donna, and he’ll be here.”

She pushed, roaring, and felt a looseness and a tearing.

“Stop so I can clear his nose.”

“You stop!” she shouted, though she struggled to hold back.

“All right, one last!” In a terrific rush of flesh and fluid, the baby was born. “There he is, bigger than life!”

Doctor Lien lifted up a blue creature, squirming and squalling. It was not purple, like the babies she had seen in the films, but truly blue. With each breath it took, its blood-mottled skin cleared, until the screaming baby was a ghastly white. The doctor fastened a set of clamps and snipped the cord.

“Well, look here! An albino. I bet he’s got eyes as pink as a rabbit’s,” Doctor Lien said. Donna’s stomach turned in her. The baby looked like a chicken carcass hung in a butcher’s window. She threw up green bile on the floor, spattering the doctor’s feet. She is here. The baby has just arrived, too. I can feel it. It was no easy thing, getting to this hospital. I’d bumped my way through four different medical communities before reaching Froedtert. All the while, it was doctors and charities and community activists that called the shots. Once my health was stabilized, they all agreed on one thing – the unknown, blind, mute homeless man should have a new face to replace the one the rats ate.

They’ve cut a hunk of tendon from my shoulder socket and carved it into a nose. They’ve reconstructed the gnawed cheekbones, stitched muscles into place, and moved skin grafts from my side to my skull. Those four surgeries are finished, and ten more are planned to reconstruct my brow, lips, and chin. Of course, they can’t give me new eyes, or a new tongue.

Why have they done all this? To them, I am a symbol of human tenacity. They have made me a living unknown soldier, the manifestation of all human torment, all human hope. They think I cling to life out of sheer determination and undying hope.

In fact, I remain only to slay my child. The rats hadn’t been enough. They ate away most of me, yes, and it was quick work for them. By the time the garbage men found me in the alley, I had no limbs, no face, no lips, and no eyes. What was lost grew back – spirit arms and legs, a spirit face and eyes. I am mostly angel now, thanks to the rats.

But they could not eat away the one parcel of flesh that truly binds me to the world. My child. My newborn child. It is time to go see him.

I lift my spirit hands before me and curve them inward. The fingertips sink through flesh as though it were only shadow. They sink until they surround my heart. I can feel the wild, determined flailing of that angry muscle. It is strong, very strong. It wants to live. But what if I squeeze it like this? What if I suffocate my own heart with my very fingers?

Ah, even I can hear that beeping alarm as my pulse goes wild – even I, who have no external ears, but only holes in my head like the ears of a lizard. They will come running soon. They will shock me with those pads, never knowing that electricity can do nothing to this adamantine grip of mine. They will stick a needle into my heart and pump it full of adrenaline, which will only make the thing tear itself to pieces. They will crack me open like a turkey and massage the muscle by hand.

The heart machine is buzzing in flatline. My body is bucking atop the table. It’s quite a show. The doctor who did my grafts is here. He stares despairingly at the two triangles of flesh that he calls my face.

“No response. Nothing. BP dropping. We’re losing him.”

They’re losing me. I’m gaining them.

I do not feel the scalpel carve into my chest, so sharp it is, but I see the hot red line and hear the ratchet sound of rib spreaders cracking the bone. Then one of them darts a gloved hand into the space and grabs the still hunk of meat. It doesn’t matter to me. I can already feel necrosis setting in. My touch is a touch of death. Rarely has it erred – once, with a certain police officer, but it will not err now.

My death must be perfect.

I am rising above my body. Cameras start going off from the hallway. There is an orderly pushing reporters and photographers back – ah, Blake Gaines. It is good to see you again! You want more pictures of me? Color shots of puddling blood and wide-eyed surgeons and orderlies forming human chains and Right to Lifers in a round-the-clock prayer vigil?

Perfect. It is as though I had orchestrated this death at the height of my powers rather than the depths. Too bad I cannot stay. My spirit body is complete now. I am angel once more. This mound of hamburger can no longer hold me to the world.

But there is other flesh – skin the color of clouds and eyes as pink as a rabbit’s – he would bind me here. He would witness to my physical presence in the world. His name in the Book of Life would seal my fate forever. Hello, Donna. It is good to see that your travail is done. This is our son, then, yes? He is ghastly, wouldn’t you say? The color of paper. I know, to you he is precious, but to me he is unfinished business. Ah, yes, let me touch my son. He frowns in his sleep and arches his back. Good. He recognizes me after all.

Hush my child and death attend thee,

All through the night.

I, your killing angel send thee,

All through the night.

While the weary world is creeping,

Hill and dale in slumber sleeping,

I your lovely soul am keeping

All through the night.

Ah, there, Son, your breath ceases, your struggle ceases, your flesh gives up the ghost.

I watch you flee through the ceiling and heavenward like a rocket. All is right. Once again, all is right.

Glory to God in the Highest.

When Detective Leland awoke, she felt the cold stillness in her arms. She struggled to her feet, clutching the child tight beneath breasts that had not yet even fed it.

“My baby! My baby! Mother of God! He’s dead!”

I know you, Mrs Billings, you with your splendid lawyers bought by splendid money and your splendid not-guilty verdict bought the same way, and the bag of splendid cashmere under your arm. I know you. You have worked hard this year, endured much. You deserve an easy descent. Take the escalator, my beautiful lady. Take the escalator. I have been preparing it for you. Do not mind the slight tugging on your dress. Do not mind the way the teeth separate there at the bottom and give enough space for one masticated human body to be yanked, living, down among the gear work. Do not fear, my sweet Mrs Billings, for this thirty-three seconds of grinding and spattering and thrashing is not nearly as much woe as the store management will have when folk begin to talk of the butcher-turned maintenance-man who lives beneath the floors.